Leave it to Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, the Dean of beat poets, who died two years ago
just a month shy of his 102nd birthday, to capture a post-Easter take
on mortality. Never one to shy
away from ambivalence, his deep well of moral outrage at a brutal
modern world is counterpoint to the sunny optimism of What
a Wonderful World, the Vietnam Era Louis Armstrong hit.
The
World is a Beautiful Place
The world is a beautiful place
to
be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you
don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The
world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you
don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if
it isn’t you
Oh the
world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such
other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and
its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making
the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs of having
inspirations
and walking around
looking at
everything
and smelling
flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making
babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and
going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the
middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then
right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
From
A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright ©1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
No comments:
Post a Comment